By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

The enrollment period for Medicare Part D, offering prescription-drug coverage, is open through Dec. 31, and seniors are being asked to choose a plan carefully because premiums and covered medications change from year to year and vary from plan to plan.

Now is the time for Medicare recipients to review changes made by their current plan and compare it with others, said Natalie Myers, a health-insurance specialist with Medicare health-plan operations in Kansas City.

“It’s now more important than ever because it helps maintain competition,” she said.

Myers said 85 percent, or 940,884, of the Medicare beneficiaries in Missouri have some form of prescription-drug coverage. But 15 percent have no known coverage.

She also said surveys show that participants are pleased with the program, which began in 2006.

For 2009, Missouri participants may choose from 48 prescription-drug plans, including 16 national plans. In 2008, there were 52 plans, of which 17 were national. In Missouri, six plans discontinued offering a benefit for 2009. Two new plans were added.

The deductible for 2009 is $295, compared with $275 in 2008. Cost-sharing continues until prescription-drug spending reaches $2,700. The participant then will be responsible for all coverage through the gap, or so-called “doughnut hole,” until catastrophic coverage kicks in at $4,350.

The figures do not reflect monthly premium costs.

Participants also may choose an enhanced benefit package with reduced or no deductible, a lower cost-sharing structure and other options.

Myers said the least expensive plan costs $54.50 a month.

She said that if beneficiaries don’t enroll in a Medicare prescription-drug plan at their first opportunity and they don’t have other means of creditable coverage, they will have to pay a penalty that is equal to 1 percent of the national base beneficiary premium for every month they could have had the coverage but chose not to.

She said it is important to note that agents and brokers are not allowed to go door-to-door unsolicited or to cold-call beneficiaries.